Life Science Content Challenges
A look at the common challenges with life science content marketing and how to overcome them.
Marketing plans for life science organisations, regardless of what those organisations produce or promote, will include elements of content. Over 80% of the plan will actually include such content as the life science industry has evolved over the last 5-10 years.
The issue almost right away here is that, as you are well aware, content marketing isn’t easy. It requires time and expertise, not to mention a whole range of other requirements that pose challenges for which we will look at in this post.
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But as a life science marketer, you are not alone. Others like you will experience the same challenges. Pharma Exec state that more than 75% of those surveyed confirmed that their organisations produce “moderate to enormous” amounts of content, but only a small 13% think they managed the content process well.
Read on to determine what the factors are that hamper content marketing and how they create a range of challenges, as we also look to also provide some solutions.
10 LIFE SCIENCE CONTENT MARKETING CHALLENGES
Here are ten common content challenges that marketers face in the life science sectors. Do any of them sound familiar to you?
1. ASSIGNING BUDGETS FOR CONTENT PIECES AND CAMPAIGNS
How much of your overall marketing budget should you allocate to content creation and distribution? How do you disseminate this budget between individual content pieces? This is the first content challenge in the life sciences, and it’s a difficult one at that since hitting marketing objectives in a complex sector is in itself a challenge. For an idea, Gartner suggest that organisations with $250–500 million in revenue can spend 10% on their marketing activities, with a large proportion of that going on content.
If you are yet to conduct content marketing campaigns, or are yet to measure those you are currently conducting, now is the time to experiment and begin. The goal is to determine which content campaigns are performing best to be able to assign future budgets in that direction. Depending on the exact nature and format of those campaigns, it may take some time to see results - which is a challenge in itself. In this experimentation stage, be sure to also adopt some lead generation campaigns (promoting some gated content will immediately provide some ROI and can help keep your line manager at bay whilst other long-term content campaigns take shape).
2. STAYING CONTEMPORARY WITH CONTENT MARKETING TECHNOLOGIES FOR PROMOTION AND DISTRIBUTION (AND INTEGRATING THOSE TECHNOLOGIES)
Possibly a challenge that can only be overcome by constantly keeping an eye out on developments out of your control. There is no need for me to tell you how fast technology develops, and with it, the way in which we go about our daily tasks, in the life sciences and in every other sector. Google, for example, continually change their search algorithms which affect the rankings of our web pages on their SERPs. We can’t do anything about this. But to react to this, we can be aware of the changes and anticipate how our organic website traffic might be affected, and then make changes so we don’t lose traffic to our content. Heads up: Google has recently rolled out its BERT update to provide users with more relevant results based on the natural language used within the search terms.
Keeping updated with updates that will challenge you - such as those that AI, machine translation or even those that continually happen on social media or with email providers - will keep you ahead of the game. Always embrace such changes and invest in integrating those technologies. Blogs (such as this one - plenty others also available which are more technology-focused!) are a great place to keep updated on such developments, which can provide the warning signs that something is about to change for your content, prompting further investigation. See a previous post on a suggested marketing-technology stack for your organisation to ensure you currently have the technology required.
3. STAYING CONTEMPORARY WITH CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIES AND TACTICS
Just as technology will develop, so will the behaviours of the readers of our content. Previously life science organisations would create product-focused content which would focus solely on the products and services offered. In recent years, the content which customers require is more solutions-focused, designed to educated rather than promote. This is why an inbound marketing perspective has emerged as highly relevant in the life science sectors (which also brings with it a range of challenges).
Creating and maintaining buyer personas can help keep you and your content marketing efforts on track in this respect. If your readers prefer long-form content to short-form, or vice versa, focus your efforts on the content that matters. It’s challenging to get your content marketing strategy and subsequent tactics right, but doing your research will significantly help with your task. See post on content marketing examples in the life sciences for inspiration on the types of content we’re seeing in the life sciences.
4. EXTRACTING CONTENT FROM SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS
B2B life science marketers and content creators will be looking to create content relevant to those in other scientific organisations - perhaps those within the labs. Therefore, the content that needs to be created is usually highly technical and is extracted by experts on the particular subject which you are looking to cover. But it’s never easy to get this information; subject matter experts are too busy and too far away in other locations and too focused on their own tasks to spend time providing the content required.
Potentially one of the biggest life science content marketing challenges, gathering content can, however, be achieved with some focus. Can you interview your organisation’s subject matter expert by visiting that person in the lab, or can you call the person to then transcribe the conversation later? Can you record his or her presentation at an industry event? It’s challenging to get the right content for your campaigns, but by tracking down your subject matter experts (the source of the content) you can eventually gather the information required to form the appropriate content for your life science organisation.
5. CREATING CONTENT THAT MEETS INDUSTRY AND REGULATORY STANDARDS, THAT’S ALSO ALIGNED WITH BUYER PERSONAS
If you operate within the B2C or B2B life science sectors, the likelihood of regulations halting your marketing campaigns are high. There is no getting away from the fact that we’re in a highly regulated industry and keeping up with region-specific compliance is tough. When we are looking to create content that align with our buyer personas (within our designated buyer’s journeys) serving content that creates a lasting impression that converts becomes even more difficult.
Before any content is created, it’s important that you and your marketing department are operating in an ethical manner. Content teams need to be aware of the rules and regulations that may stand in the way of their messages and should always avoid over-promoting, over-selling and being over-direct with marketing campaigns. Determine the buyer’s journey and the persona, as well as the specific message, and then determine if the message is ethical and legal. This is a challenge that may take some time to overcome.
6. ENSURING CONTENT REMAINS ON-BRAND, EVEN AFTER BEING EDITED BY MULTIPLE DEPARTMENTS AND TEAMS
Not only is it difficult to ensure content is ethical and legal, it’s also difficult to ensure that content remains “on-brand” and consistent with other marketing messages from a perspective of style and tone of voice. This is a challenge in the life sciences because content generally goes through multiple rounds of amends, via multiple departments. Perhaps the content that was first written upon an interview with a research professional, upon revisions from the product, sales and then legal department, looks nothing like the original.
If you produce content within a life science organisation, you will know that on top of it being a challenge, it is a challenge that cannot be solved with ease. Your sales team may be able to offer some guidance into the recent problem that clients are facing, with your legal team able to signpost on regulatory issues, but if the content is inconsistent and off-brand, the content piece may not have the intended effect for that buyer persona at a specific stage of the buyer’s journey. Look to establish a process whereby each department is allocated a certain round of amends and maintain strong brand guidelines that all involved can adopt.
7. WORKING WITH EXTERNAL PARTNERS
Similarly, working with external partners can be challenging as it introduces another variable into the content development process. It is true (even if we do say so ourselves) that hiring external partners and agencies do take the burden away from the life science marketer and content creator as the agency will handle the process of extracting the content and creating it. This is what we do with our clients. But this doesn’t mean that the marketer can sit back throughout the process.
Working with agencies, although beneficial in a number of ways, does bring with it its own set of unique challenges when it comes to content creation. Be prepared to review how the agency will work with you, specifically the tasks you’re looking to outsource and how they fit with your internal content marketing processes. Before working with external partners and marketing agencies, ask them these questions to gauge suitability. You may not have the content skills in-house, so look to work with agencies… just do your homework first.
8. KNOWING HOW THE CONTENT IS BEING USED BY ITS READER
Another difficult challenge. Knowing exactly how the content you are creating being used is not easy, in fact, it may be impossible to get right every time. Sales departments might claim that the current bottom-of-the-funnel content is positively influencing sales decisions, but they may not really know if this is true. Getting to the bottom of this is a challenge because it entails connecting various dots (analytics, sales enablement, subject matter experts) to only then be able to second guess if the content is working as planned. This, of course, excludes the difficult option of actually asking your customers…
Fortunately, the traditional buyer’s journey - when broken into three distinct stages: awareness, consideration and decision - provides stages where the typical life science buyer may be at during a buying cycle. Creating content for each stage of this buyer’s journey is a must. We have previously written a blog post on the types of life science content per buyer’s journey stage to help you pin-point your content and create that content in a more strategic manner. Creating content in this manner, as well as conducting some internal and external audience research, will dramatically improve your content performance and overcome the suitability challenge as best as it can.
9. DEMONSTRATING ROI
There’s no doubt about it, demonstrating return on investment on content campaigns in any sector or vertical is challenging. Sales cycles in B2B life science is long, and content often (certainly if you are producing organic content) takes time to produce results. Both of these factors don’t usually bode well with the Financial Director who is only concerned with hard numbers, and not so much positioning, trust and sentiment factors that all contribute to sales and conversions. Consider reporting on cost-saving, website and consumption metrics should your lead generation efforts not lead to any concrete figures just yet. Alternatively, the Content Marketing Institute provide further guidance in demonstrating content marketing ROI.
Unfortunately, there aren’t lots more that you can do here. As previously mentioned, be sure to run paid campaigns that send traffic direct to landing pages that can convert there and then, alongside your other campaigns, and also educate your line manager on content marketing so that expectations are realistic. Running several (or different) campaigns will help produce positive results. See this guide on how to demonstrate marketing ROI for more.
10. DELIVERING THE CONTENT!
All of the above challenges create the final challenge on this list: Actually delivering that completed piece of content for the world to see when the demand for content is high. Delivering high-quality, optimised and appropriate life science content is no doubt a huge challenge and you will need help from other departments (and partners) if you find that it is becoming increasingly challenging to meet your objectives.
Be realistic about the content your organisation is able to create and create a content plan and production calendar that plans out the process so you are fully aware of the lead times involved. Keep that plan close. Also, get smart with the content you already have and look to re-purpose and repackage. Can blog posts be combined into a downloadable e-book, or can snippets of the post be used to create social media posts or infographics? The content you already have is valuable; use it. Break everything down and reuse everything you have across campaigns, and across regions.
TURN CHALLENGES INTO OPPORTUNITIES
There’s no doubt that the challenges that life science content produces are difficult to overcome. But that also doesn’t mean that they cannot be overcome, and your marketing department can subsequently produce and promote exceptional content that promotes your organisations and its products and services on many fronts. Stay away from outdated processes, technologies and tactics and pride yourself on being a flexible content marketer with an ability to adapt.
Look to be strategic in all the content you create; an Accenture study confirms that a lack of strategy puts investment at risk. Streamline the process between departments. Once the content is published, keep track of its performance. Are visitors providing details on your forms or are they dropping off the page? Look for clues within your Google Analytics platform. What you learn about how published content performs will help you shape the content you will require in the future, which might help you overcome the common challenges associated with life science content marketing.
